Over the past two weeks, much has been written about how former supervisor/state senator/state assemblymember/Lou Sheldon bitch Lou Correa lost the First Supervisorial District race to former Garden Grove councilmember Andrew Do. Coming a couple of months after a disastrous 2014 Election Day that saw Sharon Quirk-Silva lose her State Senate race to Young Kim and Jose Solorio lose handily to Janet Nguyen in the race for Correa's old State Senate seat, and it's been a bitter pill for Democrats but especially OC Latinos, who now find themselves without a wab representative in Sacramento or on the Board of Supervisors for the first time since 1998.

The most popular angle taken by local media and pundits is that Correa and Solorio should've won handily because the district they ran in have a lot of Mexicans in it, but those damn Vietnamese voters in Little Saigon just vote too darn much! For Correa supporters, the main culprit is a 2011 gerrymandering scheme by the all-Republican Board of Supervisors at the time (don't accuse me of exaggerating--no less a conservative lion than then-Supervisor John Moorlach called it "gerrymandering") that diluted Latino voting power in the First by bringing in more Little Saigon voters--you know, those voters who vote too much. Both Latino yaktivists and Democratic Party officials are now mumbling about a possible lawsuit using California's Voting Rights Act to correct the First's alleged wrong and ensure Latino wins in the future. That's fine and all, but that stance will let off the hook the biggest reason why OC electoral gains in higher office for Latinos have now been effectively rolled back two decades: the pendejos running the Democratic Party of Orange County.

The Vien Dong Daily News, one of the largest Vietnamese newspapers printed in the United States, issued a correction last Friday after not just misquoting Garden Grove Mayor Bao Nguyen, but making up a quote wholesale.

In their original article, published February 11, Vien Dong reported that Nguyen said "It's been 40 years, why is the Vietnamese community still angry?", prompting an outcry of anti-Communist fervor from its readers and across Little Saigon that has the new mayor in hot water and Republicans dreaming recall. Never mind that Nguyen never even said the phrase "40 years" that night, or anything remotely close to that during the meeting.

Anyone who knows anything about Little Saigon politics knows the routine: someone brings up something condemning anything remotely related to the commie Republic of Vietnam, and every politician follows forth praising refugees and freedom and damning the Reds--never mind that trade between Little Saigon and Vietnam goes into the hundreds of millions annually. Leading the way, of course, are Vietnamese politicians, who know any deviation from this script will result in angry protests and retribution at the ballot box.

Garden Grove will be sending the city of Riverside a letter urging them to dissolve their planned sister city relationship with Can Tho, Vietnam, but Mayor Bao Nguyen's signature won't be on it.

No, in a near four-hour long meeting last night, the Garden Grove City Council voted to send a letter, but to let each member of the city council decide themselves if they want to affix their name to it. That decision came in place of a vote that would have sent a letter signed by the city as a unit.

I'll have more thoughts on Andrew Do's presumptive victory over Lou Correa in the First Supervisorial District special election last week, specifically what it means to OC politics in general. But for this week's edition of my KCRW-FM 89.9's "Orange County Line," I decided to focus on how Vietnamese voters vote in Orange County, specifically in Little Saigon: often, early, and in such numbers that it leads to the easy wins of shady politicians like Do and his mentor (and former boss), State Senator Janet Nguyen.

As I explained to host Steve Chiotakis, the Little Saigon machine is almost overwhelmingly Republican, but has led to the election of Garden Grove Mayor Bao Nguyen. Bao also represents the future of Little Saigon politics as a 1.5-generation politician, part of a generation for whom communism is no longer the rallying cry it is for the elders. But that moment hasn't happened yet, so let's sit back and marvel at the Little Saigon machine--and laugh at the idiot local Democrats who have let this happen.

Yesterday, hundreds of anti-communist protestors bussed from Little Saigon to Riverside to picket like they're wont to do. They converged on the Riverside City Hall for a day, and for a few hours in the mild weather rallied against a sister-city relationship between Riverside and Can Tho, the fourth largest city in Vietnam. Can Tho is a beautiful city in the Mekong Delta, located in the far south of Vietnam. It's known for its floating marketplace and giant bridge--much nicer to visit than Riverside. It's also my dad's hometown.

Pandering to the Vietnamese voter base has been way simple for a long time. In danger of losing your election? Just say your opponents loves the commies. Or you hate the commies more! Throw in some grainy photos, and don't forget to slap a a commie star on the commie...'cause commie star! Even Karl Rove couldn't think of a more fiendishly simple script.

And here's the latest example from Little Saigon: an attack mailer targeted at Garden Grove mayoral candidate (and current school trustee) Bao Nguyen paid for by a committee tied to the city's mayor, Bruce Broadwater.

The Weekly appears twice on the mailer (It's nice to know we have fans), which paints Nguyen as a commie-loving, community-hating all around bad guy--and anyone knows that any politician this infernal rag doesn't immediately hate has no chance of winning an election. But the attack basically boils down to: freedom of speech sucks, everyone who lives in Vietnam is a communist, and gay people shouldn't be talked about.

UPDATE, 5:31 P.M.: The person whose address was listed as having rejected the letter contacted the Weekly and let us know that not only did they NOT write the "gook" note visible in the letter, but that they never even received the letter in the first place. As we wrote earlier, we openly wondered who actually wrote the note.

ORIGINAL POST, 10:33 A.M.: Holy racism, Bat Man! Fresh off the presses of our friends over at Angry Asian Man, someone returned a letter sent by an Asian-American-run insurance company in Westminster because they, quote, "Don't Speak Gook."

Last night, hundreds of Vietnamese Americans beset Irvine City Hall to voice their distaste at Larry Agran's suggestion that the city of Irvine start a friendship city relationship with Nha Trang, Vietnam. They filled the seats and the parking lot, overflowing around the building as anti-communist Vietnamese Americans in Orange County have done since Vietnamese Americans have been in Orange County.

By the end of the night (really, before the meeting even began), Agran relented, and pulled the Vietnamese city the vote. He still lost his vote to befriend two other cities, one in China and one in Pakistan, 2-3 along party lines.